Prince Andrew Arrested. Will The Epstein Files Take Down Others?

No other organ brings together science and spirituality quite like the human brain. Our thinking is very different from what we have imagined. Studies about the brain are, at heart, studies about ourselves. So why, even after centuries of research, has the brain still remained such a stubborn and elusive mystery? I'm Meghna Chakrabarty. Listen to On Point for our special series, Brainwaves, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Left, Right & Center. I'm Susan Davis, your host this week, filling in for David Green. The law must take its course. That was the response from King Charles on Thursday to the news that his brother, former Prince Andrew, was arrested over new revelations about his official conduct and the sharing of confidential information that was revealed in the Epstein files. That's the shorthand for the recent release of millions of pages of documents and materials tied to the federal investigations and prosecution of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019. Several other officials overseas have lost jobs and titles. American executives and academics have stepped down or are being called on to resign. U.S. economist Larry Summers announced he will step back from public commitments. The head of Hyatt is stepping down. Tom Pritzker saying in a statement in part. Goldman Sachs chief legal officer Kathy Rumler is resigning after the latest. Brad Karp, the longtime chairman of elite Wall Street law firm, has resigned following renewed scrutiny of his past connections to Jeffrey Epstein. But despite the public outcry, there's been little fallout for political figures here in the U.S. Some House Democrats have called for the impeachment of Attorney General Pam Bondi after a contentious congressional hearing last week over the Justice Department's handling of the files. Here's New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking at a live event on Sunday. You are the attorney general of the United States of America, and you don't want to hold any one of these pedophiles accountable. Resign or be impeached. Bondi's also facing criticism from some fellow Republicans, in particular, Kentucky Congressman Tom Massey. Here's Massey on Sunday in an interview with ABC's Martha Raddatz. Do you still have confidence in Pam Bondi as attorney general? I don't think Pam Bondi has confidence in Pam Bondi. She wasn't confident enough to engage in anything but name calling in a hearing. And so, no, I don't have confidence in her. What will be the lasting effect on those named in the files? And what, if any, political impact could we see going forward? Let's bring in our left, right and center panel. We have Mo Alethi, executive director at Georgetown University's Institute of Politics and Public Service. He was also communications director for the Democratic National Committee and an advisor to Hillary Clinton. And on the right, we have Mike Dubke. Mike's a veteran GOP communications strategist and advisor. He was the White House Director of Communications under Donald Trump in 2017. Hello to you both. Hey, Sue. Good to see you again. I do think we should be clear at the top that just because someone was named in the Epstein files does not mean they have committed any wrongdoing. And I think our conversation today is rooted in the political implications, obviously not the legal ones. But I think I would just open it up to both of you. And Mo, I'll start with you to just get your reaction to the initial fallout of the release of these documents, which we should say is still ongoing. I guess the first thing I'd say is I'm still reeling from the announcement of the former prince's arrest to have a member of the royal family implicated. And to be clear, again, it wasn't for any of the sexual misconduct. It was for other abuse of office. But it just goes to show how widespread the fallout is of everything Epstein-related. It goes to show the connective tissue amongst the elites in many different ways. It can reach the highest levels of power in one of the world's great nations and barely create a ripple here in the U.S. And that to me is remarkable. Yeah, there are some people here who are facing some uncomfortable moments and some people have lost jobs. But the collective yawn that we are seeing relative to what we are seeing overseas, it's really staggering. So, you know, I think the political fallout has yet to play out. I think the coming weeks and months are going to tell us a lot because every day we're finding another figure with another connection, another email. Some of it has no legal implications, but it certainly has other implications. And whether or not that actually sort of wakes up the conscience of this nation to take on this sense of elites circling the wagons in protecting each other. I'm a little surprised it hasn't done more of that yet. If it does, then I think there are going to be huge political implications. Mike, what do you think? First of all, I want to talk about the asterisk that everyone always puts at the start of this conversation, which is, just because you were named in the files doesn't mean we're accusing you of any wrongdoing. I think that's a really interesting take from the United States' point of view, because it seems to not apply to Europe. So all the individuals that we're talking about, these are all individuals that weren't necessarily tied to any of the sexual parts of the Epstein files, but they all have taken a fall because of their association with this individual and being named in these files. So I almost think in this case, that asterisk doesn't apply when it comes to Europe. Now, in the United States, it does, except where, Mo, I'm going to push back a little bit. I mean, the Olympic Committee in LA seems to be getting rid of their president. Goldman Sachs has lost one of their top lawyers on this. Harvard lost their former president and a professor over being named in this. I think we're going to see continued fallout. And I appreciate what you're saying about the elites in this country and internationally that have been wrapped up in this. I guess I've been surprised, the one thing I've been surprised with the document dump that the DOJ had was the breadth of conversations of individuals that were kind of caught up in these emails. and the multiple times that people went back and continued conversations, even when they knew that he was either had been indicted in Florida and cut a plea deal in Florida, or then after the federal charges were filed. So there's going to be more fallout from this. I don't think there's this dichotomy between the U.S. and the rest of the world, really, when it comes to anyone associated with this seems to have gone down a peg, some more than others. And we can talk about other individuals like Secretary Lutnik and others that have been named in this. But this is a far-reaching episode. And I think it's going to go even further. And I think it exposes amongst the elites, and where I'd like to maybe talk a little bit about this, it's really a different world. They may be successful in business or technology or politics, but they're not successful people as a whole. And I think that's what's being exposed. But Mike, can I follow up with you about that, about the accountability factor? Because I'm curious for your take in particular about the Trump administration's handling of the release of the files, because it was pretty contentious to even get the Justice Department to do this, and it required Congress passing a law to make it happen. And it could, to your point about elites protecting themselves, it could also look like the Trump administration was a little bit part of that elites protecting themselves by how much they fought releasing this information. Look, as a communications professional, and I'll be brief about this, this is one of the worst handled. And I've been saying this since the beginning. I mean, for an administration that was so disciplined out of the gate because of the experience they had in Trump 1.0 and understanding the media. And frankly, say what you want about Donald Trump. This guy understands the media and how to utilize the media. This has been a disaster from the start, from the binders outside the West Wing to there's nothing to see here. This has been an unmitigated disaster. And the fact that we are now into 2026, after this was talked about in the 2024 campaign, this is like what you don't do in communications. You want to get that information out as soon as possible so that you can move on. And this dragging on by DOJ, by the White House and everybody else has created a situation where there's probably more interest than there would have been if they had just gotten it out of the gate in February of 2025 rather than February of 2026. I mean, there's so many problems, So many problems with every step of this. I want to go back to something you were saying earlier, Mike. You mentioned Secretary Lutnik, and I just think he's a good example of the problem here. People knew as far back as 2005 that Jeffrey Epstein was a bad guy. Lutnik's name starts to surface through all of this, starts denying that he had many interactions with him. Then we find out when he had to admit before the Senate that he and his family were on Epstein's Island in 2012, a full seven years after we all knew he was a bad guy. And there are countless other people like that. And that's the big difference, right? This is the big difference between the way this reckoning is not taking place here relative to Europe. The association is ending careers in some places, but for the inner circle, it's not. And when the attorney general who made this her life's mission at the start of the administration, she said the whole binders thing. For her to essentially say and others in the administration essentially to say, case closed, we did a dump, we scoured the documents, it proves President Trump is not implicated in any wrongdoing, and so it's time for us to move on. I mean, they're saying the quiet part out loud, right, that their whole point here is to protect their guy and beyond that, to hell with the victims. I mean, when she sat in that congressional hearing and was asked would she apologize to the victims whose names were released inappropriately, she didn't even look at the victims in the eye. She yelled at the questioner saying, I'm not going to play your theatrics. Every step of this along the way has been a disaster from a PR perspective. It's been terrible for the victims, and it is fed into this real sense amongst so many people that the rules for the elites are different than they are for us. I'm curious to get both of your take on how the accountability question of this could play in the midterms. And in that I mean what has been really striking to me about this is how the Epstein files moved from sort of a conspiracy theory type small audience into what I think is fair to describe as in the mainstream consciousness and conversation in America right now. And I have been sort of blown away at how many people in my life who never care about politics ask about this, about the response and how things have gone viral online in places that don't normally have these conversations. And to me, there's a warning sign here. Like voters are paying attention to this story and they seem collectively enraged by what they've learned about their government and about the system. And it's hard for me to see that this doesn't have any impact in this year's elections, although I obviously I can't speculate as how. But do you think that there's going to be a political impact from the bottom up, not just from the top down? It's an interesting question through a different prism. If you accept the fact that Donald Trump part of his appeal to voters who generally don turn out but turn out while he on the ballot is that he speaks truth to power even though he in those rooms He basically calls others out and they really appreciate the fact that here an elite calling out other elites If that is part of the motivation of some of the voters, and now we've got this very sordid but interesting story because it kind of touches on everything. wealth, sex, cover-ups, lies, everything that, you know, Hollywood would like to put into a story to attract an audience. I mean, we've got it all in this Epstein file. We've got people that hold themselves up to a higher level performing very badly and being portrayed as rightfully so as, you know, a little slimy or a lot slimy in this. But if you view it through the prism of, you know, are we now going to hold Republicans accountable on this or Democrats accountable on this? Because it's a, you know, once again, it's these elites. This is where I don't think it's necessarily a Republican or a Democratic thing. I think it's almost a pox on politics and everybody that's associated with it. And unless somebody is tied directly to this in a congressional race or in a Senate race, I don't necessarily think it's going to affect voting against one party or the other. I just, I don't, because I think it's almost an indictment of the entire system rather than one of our political parties. It might. It might have an impact here. And the reason it might is because we're living in this era where people think the system is rigged. And here is another data point that shows how bad it has been rigged. And at the highest of stakes, children, not women, children were being abused in this case. And we are seeing, again, the elite circle, the wagons to protect themselves. The guy who promised, who absolutely promised that he was going to unrig the system helped cover up this problem in the views of many Americans by how hard he fought the release. So he's not on the ballot. He can't be punished for that. Right. That's the important part, Mo. He's not on the ballot. But so many of the people who are on the ballot rallied behind him in that cover up, said there's nothing to see here. We should move on. And so if voters see it through that prism, then this is yet another data point in a growing number of data points they have that this Republican Party, this administration that promised to level the playing field absolutely has not. All right. We do need to take a break. But before we do, here at Left, Right and Center, we are obviously all about engaging with each other across the aisle and across the kitchen table. If you have something to say about this week's topic, well, now you can join Left, Right and Center's community conversation on Substack. Sign up for a weekly inbox reminder to hone up on the show and get to debating. Join in on that latest discussion at kcrwlrc.substack.com. Again, that's kcrwlrc.substack.com. And I'll be back with Mo Alethi and Mike Dubke to talk about President Trump's State of the Union address that he's going to deliver next Tuesday. You're listening to Left, Right and Center. You ever get a weird spam call or a suspect email that just seems a little too specific? It's because our personal info is scattered all over the Internet, sold, traded and stored by data brokers. But you don't have to be helpless. Let me tell you about Incogni. It's incredibly useful. It takes just a couple of minutes to sign up, and once you give them permission, they go to work scrubbing your personal data from those databases. It's one of those tools that quietly runs in the background to give you real peace of mind. 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President Trump is going to deliver his State of the Union address this coming Tuesday. It comes during yet another contentious partial government shutdown. Stop me if you've heard that one before. Congressional Democrats and Republicans are still deadlocked over whether and how to impose restrictions on immigration law enforcement officers. And some Democrats announced that they're going to skip Trump's address altogether and hold their own rally on the National Mall called the People's State of the Union. So Tuesday could be a tense night inside the U.S. Capitol. Let's talk about what to expect from the president. Mike, considering everything that's happening in this moment between the Epstein files, between ice arrests and deportations, what is the message and what is the tone that you think the president should bring to Tuesday's address, knowing that the president often veers off of the script? I desperately want him to talk about inflation, affordability. I want him to get back to what this administration is trying to accomplish and has already accomplished on kitchen table issues. I want him to talk about the Trump accounts for children who are born and will be able to see that money grow and hopefully use that for higher education or for their first house or whatever when they grow up. I want him to talk about Trump Rx and lowering drug prices. I want him to talk about what this administration has done to bring down prices at the grocery store that were at historically low levels of the cost of gasoline. I think that will be a part of this. I'm afraid that he may do what Joe Biden tried to do with Bidenomics and say, you don't understand how good you have it. Why don't you understand that, the American people? I think that's a loser direction to go. I think he's got a lot of good things to talk about that are starting to come to fruition. Our inflation is down to 2.3% in January. The jobs numbers were better. Tariffs haven't been as big of a hit as the economists told you they were going to be. But I'm afraid he's not going to do that. I'm frankly afraid it's going to be more of a lecture on the economy. And then it's going to be a doubling down on ICE, on the border, on immigration, on Ukraine, Gaza, a whole bunch of other things. And what the American people desperately want to hear is how their life is going to be better and cheaper and more affordable. Well, one of the things that has been striking to me about Trump's first year in office and Washington more broadly is just how irrelevant Congress has been for the past year. In some regards, you know, the party that chairs the same party as the White House is going to serve as a bit of a rubber stamp for the White House. But it has been a historically low legislating year. It doesn't seem like the president himself has suggested that maybe legislating is over. I wonder if you see any areas for actual legislation and bipartisan cooperation considering how much opposition there is to the president and the Democratic Party. I mean, every now and then you'll see something pop up where there's some potential. Lately, it's actually been on a few issues to push back on the president. And it seems like a growing number of Republican members of Congress and competitive races realize that they need to show a little bit of spine with this president. And so, you know, maybe there'll be a few things here and there. And it seems like potentially around some of the use of military force, there has been some bipartisan rumblings about maintaining Congress's role in that. We'll see what happens in the coming days and weeks with ICE and whether or not they can actually find some sort of a bipartisan deal to reform it. But I don't see a whole lot of opportunity for bipartisan agreement on anything as long as Congress is willingly taking itself out of the game. Yeah. Right? I mean, you're right. Like in the past, presidents come in with their agenda, and if their party controls the Congress, then they essentially present it as a legislative blueprint. The president's not doing that, and Congress seems to be A-OK with it. The president's saying, I don't need your legislative action. You don't even need to be a part of this conversation because I have all the authority. I can just do this. and Congress, which in the past, when a president has tried to exert increased authority from both parties, Congress would at least say, hey, hey, hold on. We may end up getting there, but we've got a role to play in this. They're not even saying that right now. And as long as that is the case, I think it's going to be hard to find a whole lot of bipartisan agreement on anything. Yeah. It's also notable to me, Mike, that you have to look at when the president comes up to the Hill and gives these speeches, how popular is the president in that moment? Because that often shapes how we watch it. And it is worth noting, I think, that Trump's approval ratings are just low right now. I think that he came into office, especially on issues like the economy and immigration. But the president himself and his administration has eroded a lot of support and goodwill that they had at the start of this administration with a lot of key voters. Yes, his numbers are low in comparison to where he was in Trump 1.0 and low from where he started after inauguration. But I think you're going to see there's a couple of things at play here, and Mo alluded to them. We're going to see Democrats falling all over themselves trying to figure out how to protest the president while he's there, whether it's this counter rally outside or it's somebody standing up and making a spectacle of themselves during the State of the Union or what color outfits people are wearing. I think we've got Congress right now, and it's unfortunate, and I will agree with Mo on this. I wish Congress would stand up and exert a little bit more of its prerogative when it comes to the administration. I don't think it's healthy for our democracy to have one branch of our government basically remove itself from the conversation for long periods of time, and that's what we've seen. I don't think that's healthy, but the reaction that we're going to see from Democrats here, I think it's going to be a bit of an overreach. They're going to fall over themselves to say who can push back against Trump harder and louder than anybody else. And I also don't think that that's good for our democracy. Talking to several members of Congress and the Senate, they desperately do want to legislate. They desperately do want to get together. And now that we're moving into the second year of the Trump administration, filing deadlines have passed. So you've got Republicans who aren't necessarily as worried about being primaried. You've got an economy that hasn't fully recovered from itself. And they're going to be on the ballot in 26, and Trump is not. And now their self-interest is in danger. I think we're going to see a little bit more bipartisanship after the State of the Union address and for the rest of at least the first and second quarter of this year, mainly because these people, these politicians need to save their own skins and get their get themselves in the game. So I have an expectation that Congress is going to be more assertive in 26 than they have been in 25. And the one thing that may keep that from actually happening is that the Democrats make the read that it better to be a full vocal opposition party and not try to pass anything because they think that the way to gaining the upper hand in the November elections You're listening to Left, Right and Center from KCRW. We're talking about President Trump's upcoming State of the Union address with Mike Dubke and Mo Alethi. And, Mo, one thing I'm listening for, because I do think the first year of the Trump administration has been very impactful in the world of foreign policy and America's place in the world. And even if you think to the shuttering of USAID or U.S. military intervention in Venezuela, this is also an opportunity and historically is an opportunity for the president to frame what role America is playing in the world. And I think it's fair to say that that role is shifting. It 100 percent is. And a State of the Union address would be an appropriate place to lay out a vision for the Trump doctrine. But, you know, hearkening back to something Mike was saying, right, like Mike talked about his fear of what the president may do as opposed to what he should do. I think it's a very legitimate fear for Mike to have because this president, despite being masterful at controlling the media, he sometimes is the least disciplined person out there. Sometimes, Mo? Mo is feeling very generous today. I love this. Yes. You know, it's funny. Sometimes he's incredibly disciplined, right? But I got to say, he has a blind spot right now, and it's the blind spot that Mike alluded to earlier. He doesn't understand why his numbers are so low. He's fallen into the same trap that every president before him has fallen into, which is, I'm going to sit here and talk about how great I have made your life. And people don't feel it on issue after issue, especially the two issues that he has historically dominated on, the economy and immigration, people do not agree that he has made their lives better on both of those. They don't agree with his approach. And so I think about Democrats who are going to boycott the speech and hold a counter protest. If I was advising Democrats, I'd say, don't do that. Do that afterwards. Go sit in there and tell everyone you know to listen to the speech because he is likely going to give a speech in which he says, this is how great I have made your life. And the more people hear him say that, the more the disconnect. The more he sits there and beats his chest and says, you should like me more because I am so good for you, which is the tone he's taken in recent media interviews. I want more Americans to hear that for themselves because that just makes the disconnect even more real. I kind of agree with Mo on a lot of what he's saying. And I'm, you know, fingers crossed that's not the direction that we're going to go. But I would probably be giving the same advice because I don't, if I was, again, why do you want a Republican giving advice to Democrats? But if I was, it would be, don't do these loud protests. You're going to look as kind of childish and foolish is maybe you're trying to portray the president and other Republicans, listen to what they're saying and then give a good counter argument to it. That is, and again, maybe, I don't know why I'm agreeing with Mo, but I am and that would be my advice to Democrats. No one's gonna listen to Mo. No one's gonna listen to me when it comes to this and we're gonna see more theater out there. One thing I would say, Susan, a theory that I've been kind of thinking about and working on, I think the president's been incredibly successful, especially at the beginning of this administration with what people have been calling flooding the zone, having so doge and the closing of agencies and all of this other stuff. He's been incredibly effective in keeping his opponents off their footing. And really, there's been so much thrown in there. You have no idea what you're supposed to respond to as a reporter, as a Democrat. at, as an opponent, as a supporter, I mean, even as a supporter, it's coming fast and furious at you. That's great when you're on offense. But I think what part of the reason the president's numbers are down is because it's also created chaos where no one feels comfortable. There is a, when you have so much coming at you, you're drinking out of a fire hydrant. It's really hard for you to feel good about yourself, where your personal economics are, where your family is, you're standing in the world, all of that, it's really hard to get your footing. And that chaos that's created by flooding the zone, which benefits the administration, I think is also hurting the administration, because even their supporters feel a little off balance. And you don't feel good about the direction of the country or the leaders of the country when you feel off balance. And I think that's part of the poll numbers here. I don't know how you correct for it because as a disruptor, this is how Donald Trump came to the White House. It is his natural state of being, whether it be in real estate or politics. And I think it's going to be a difficult turn to try to calm everything down. I also don't think he has as much fun when things are calm. Back during his first term heading into the 2020 election, I used to say he reminded me of the character Pigpen from Peanuts. Remember him? The guy who walked around with the dust cloud of dirt swirling over his head? Everywhere he went. He has a dust cloud of chaos that follows him everywhere. See, I want Tasmanian devil more than pig pen. But it's probably some combination of the two. But I think that was one of the reasons he lost in 2020. And he's brought it back, right? People are exhausted. They will be forgiving to an extent if they feel like it's benefiting them, but they don't feel like it's benefiting them right now. And instead, they just see him creating chaos and forgetting every promise that he made about how he was going to make their lives better. Yeah, I think that chaos is such a good point, Mike, especially when you know, like, there are wins. Like the president, there's low unemployment, inflation's low. But when they are the cause of all their own chaos, right? Like, there's no one to blame but the White House itself for the velocity and intensity and uncertainty that they've kind of injected into everyday life. Yeah, and you get the pluses and the minuses with that. And that's what we're seeing. All right. I've been chatting with Mike Dubke and Mo Alethi, and we'll be back to talk about the national and local fights to protect voting rights. You're listening to Left, Right & Center. We're back again with Left, Right & Center. I'm your host, Susan Davis, filling in for David Green. We're here with Mike Dubke, a veteran Republican communications strategist and advisor, and Mo Alethi, executive director at Georgetown University's Institute of Politics and Public Service. And for the past year, the Trump administration has set its sights on getting voter rolls from across the nation. But there's also been a lot of pushback from states and local organizations to protect that very information. The Constitution, after all, grants states the power to oversee elections. A few weeks ago, though, for instance, the FBI seized ballots and other documents from election officials in Fulton County, Georgia. Then a few days ago, the NAACP asked a judge to stop the administration from misusing personal info found in those files. Meanwhile, the Republican-led House passed a voting bill last week called the Save America Act. It would require proof of citizenship to vote, among other things, even though it's already against the law for non-citizens to vote in federal elections. The bill does not have enough votes in the Senate to pass a Democratic filibuster. But considering President Trump's ongoing efforts to change how elections are run, many Democratic states aren't taking any chances. Local lawmakers in places like New York and Vermont are advancing their own bills they say would protect voting access and counteract new federal rules if they go into effect. This is Vermont Democratic State Senator Keisha Rahm Hinsdale at a press conference last month to introduce Vermont's Voting Rights Act. This is not abstract. This is not theoretical. The reason we are here today is to enshrine the rights and protections of the last 60 years from the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in our state law, if and when the Voting Rights Act should be dismantled or fall entirely at the federal level. Let's talk about these fights over voting access and what they mean for the country's faith in election results. Mike, it is so notable that the Republican Party and its leader, President Trump, are becoming a party that is calling for the nationalization of our elections, which is historically and inherently not been a very conservative position. Yeah. And frankly, part of the strum and drawing that we have over this, I think, is it's more manufactured than real, specifically because states are the entity that control our elections. And I think that's for the better. I'm maybe more of a traditional conservative, a traditionalist when it comes to states' rights on this. So I have been arguing for months now that when the White House or the president is calling for national elections or to ban mail-in ballots, I'm like, that's empty rhetoric because the states actually control the system. And the part of this argument, when we talk about the SAVE Act itself, part of my, not disgust, but part of my reluctance of getting really bent out of shape on this is that the SAVE Act really doesn't do anything other than enshrine the fact that we're going to prove that somebody is a U.S. citizen. and that the Democrats all worried about this nationalizing the elections, I think, is misplaced. And it's created this kind of rhetorical back and forth. So I'm not disturbed by the SAVE Act. I don't think it's nationalizing elections. I do agree that the states should control how their citizens vote. But listen, we vote on the first Tuesday of November. We've already nationalize the elections in a sense. You know, we dictate to the states what day they're going to have the, you know, their federal elections. We don't dictate their state elections and when they're going to do those or their primaries. So I think this is a lot of much to do about nothing on the SAVE Act personally. And I'm a big supporter of states continuing to control. But Mo, the administration is taking steps. They've sued 25 states, mostly blue states, led by Democrats trying to get access to these voter rolls. The Justice Department says it's trying to, quote, clean these rolls. Do you see this as a five alarm fire as some Democrats and voting activists say it is? I think there is every reason to be concerned. I think this is a president. He has a record of doing this. He has a record of – I mean he tried to sow the seeds of distrust in the election process in the middle of the 2016 campaign that he won. He then tried to sow distrust in the election process after the 2020 election, which he lost, and then even went so far as to try to change the results of that election and not honor the results of that election. Now he's doing it again. This is a big part of what he does. Sending the FBI into Georgia, into Fulton County, after all the evidence has come out, litigated in court, years after the statute of limitation, to give a sense that there was some sort of criminality around the election results, that's for show to sow distrust in the election. elections So that why people are concerned That why people are concerned What makes this time different than last is he does control levers of power And he does we have seen a brain drain in amongst election workers around the country, the people who have been doing this work for years, in some cases, decades, have all left because they're so exhausted by the politics of the last 10 years. And in many places, they're being replaced by people who shared the president's perspective on this. And so it's more than just theoretical that this is a president who has tried to raise suspicion and is willing to use the levers of power to do so. I'm 100% in agreement with Mike that the way elections are administered should be handled at the state level. It's why you see so many Republican governors push back so much more forcefully than on anything else against the president's suggestions that we actually nationalize the elections. Though he did have a caveat, right? He said we should nationalize the elections in like 11 blue states, right? That's not really a nationalized thing then. He's not suggesting they take over the elections in states that he likes more. And I'm glad those governors are pushing back on it. But that is why you see so much anxiety on the left right now. It is because of a long history of this president. The fight over voting rights, that's not new. That's something that we've been doing for decades. Going back to the Voting Rights Act, right, going back to the Civil Rights era, We have had – that's going to continue to be a push and pull between the left and the right. But this president wants to take it a step further, and I think that's why so many people are anxious. Mike, also you run campaigns. You know how campaigns work. I've also talked to a lot of campaign managers who want to pull their hair out when the president creates doubt about things like mail-in ballots or other secure ways of voting. And it does seem to also risk hurting your own party when you feed these, plant these seeds of doubt about elections and how to vote. Yeah, listen, I, as a practitioner, I understand the power of absentee ballots. It is a, it is a, actually used to be a very strong Republican mechanism to get older voters to ensure that they can vote and do vote. when we had one election day where we didn't have early ballots like we do or early election stations open like we do in Texas and other places. And so, yeah, he talks about mail-in ballots. Now, he doesn't specifically necessarily mean absentees, but it is a chill on the effectiveness of the party to get supporters to mail in their ballots if they physically have difficulty getting to the ballot box. But listen, I think this debate about proving that you are a citizen, I vote in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and I have to show my ID when I vote. It is part of the state law. And Virginia is a, unfortunately, I think is really a blue state now. We have a Democratic governor. We have Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate. For decades, we've had to show IDs. And no one is accusing, I think, of Virginia of disenfranchising voters. This is how the Democrats won in 2025, is under these rules. So I think a lot of this, again, is manufactured. Whether there's real angst, Mo, or there's manufactured angst. A lot of what was in the SAVE Act and other programs is really just, to me, common sense. You need to prove who you are, and you need to be a citizen in order to vote. And if you're not, then you do a provisional ballot. But this isn't some grand strategy here. That's already codified, right? I mean, everywhere in every state, you have to be an American citizen to vote. So we want to talk about theatrics. I mean, this whole SAVE Act is theatrics. Now, the problem is- You got to prove it. What this is saying, and the reason you do see some anxiety around the SAVE Act specifically, is it raises the bar on how you do so, right? You got to show either a birth certificate. I mean, I think I was probably about 35, 40 years old before I even found a copy of my birth certificate. Not everyone has access to a birth certificate or a passport. There are multiple documents that you can show, and there are amendments to the SAVE Act to help with groups in rural America and all of that. So again, I think we're creating this because it is in the interest of certain political parties to make it sound like there is this authoritarian state coming, where I don't believe that that is happening. So within the context of this president and this administration who has lived off of what you just talked about, right, the political interest of creating a sense of a system that is rigged when the reality is there have been more cases of voter fraud perpetrated by Trump supporters than by the left over the past decade. But this notion that there's this widespread voter fraud being orchestrated by the left, there is literally no evidence that that is true. Widespread voter fraud is not true. Voter fraud itself is minuscule. It is not concentrated on one side or the other. And so now we have this effort, though, for the federal government to step in and take over certain elements of elections for a purpose, and that is to serve the political purpose of this president. We here at KCRW want to hear from you. Have questions you'd like to hear answered on the show? Record a voice memo, try to make it around 30 seconds or so, and send it to us at lrc at kcrw.org. Drop your first name, where you're calling from, and your question to potentially hear your question on the show. And we're going to have to leave it there. We've reached that time once again for our famed left, right, and center rants and raves featuring pet peeves and projects from across the political spectrum. That was some alliteration right there. Mo Alethi, what didn't we get to today? What's on your mind? In a couple of weeks, I think it's March 2nd, we will be celebrating Read Across America Day, which is otherwise known as the birthday of the great American philosopher, Dr. Seuss. Oh. I love Read Across America Day. I love Dr. Seuss, and every year to commemorate it, I go back and rewatch a mid-1990s-era skit on Saturday Night Live in which the Reverend Jesse Jackson reads in his unmistakable preacher's cadence, Green Eggs and Ham. You do not like green eggs and ham? I do not like them. Sam, I am. I love that every time. It reminds me so many things I love about Dr. Seuss. It reminds me so many things I love about Jesse Jackson. And so I, like many Americans, are mourning this week the loss of Jesse Jackson, a man who was a civil rights icon in and of himself, a man who was a political icon, who broke down so many political barriers. People forget that in his two presidential campaigns, the sheer number of primaries and caucuses that he won in his campaign for the Democratic nomination for president. A man who was a humanitarian, who did so much work to bring people together. It's a testament how many Americans were mourning him. When he at one point was a very polarizing figure in our politics, we all seem to be unified behind his memory today. I should note, if you like great political speeches, it's worth a rewatch of his 1988 convention speech. It's a really amazing speech, and people were literally weeping in the stadium. Mike Dubke, what's on your mind? Well, Mo brought a smile to my face. I do remember Green Eggs and Ham and Jesse Jackson's rendition of that. I think when we're done with this today, I think I may go and do exactly that. My rant and rave are, it's actually a combination, and rant and rave, and it has to do with snow. As being on the show before, folks might know I'm from Buffalo, New York, which has a reputation of dealing, getting a lot of snow and dealing with a lot of snow. But I now live in the Mid-Atlantic region, and we got hit with a lot of snow. And my rant, my rant is the inability of local governments, especially in the South, to deal with, honestly deal with snow and help their citizens get around and be able to be productive members of society after you've had some precipitation that has been frozen. We're a sorry site. I agree. I can't tell you how many people got into accidents because the snowplow decided to plow part of the lane and just leave the snow at the end of the lane without any warning signs that you're about to hit a huge snowbank that got frozen over. So that's my rant. My rave is the further south you went on this historic snow we received over the last month, I think the local officials were a lot more honest. My son lives in Little Rock, Arkansas. And I said, what's going on down there? And he goes, well, we're all snowed in. I've been home for a week. But the local officials just came on and said, we don't have the equipment. We're not cleaning the streets. Hunker down. We're going to wait for it to melt. And I just think that is a much better way of dealing with your population and your citizens when you're honest with them. And you're not telling them you're going to fix this immediately. What you're telling them is these are restrictions and we're going to let it melt. It's kind of like somebody when you've got a delayed flight. If they tell you why it's delayed, you feel better about yourself and less anxious. and I wish more local governments would do that. Just be honest with the people. If you can't clean it up, just play it straight. Let them know. Anyway, that's my rant and rave. You know, I always like to end on a rave and I always try to focus on something outside the world of politics because we need to find joy in places that are not campaigns and elections. And mine this week is something I would recommend to anyone with young children in the home is a podcast called Magic Woods. And I recommend this because my children are in a chokehold over this podcast, and they go almost catatonic when we play it. They love it so much. It's like having a babysitter in the house, and they will sit still and play nicely and listen to it while I'm trying to get dinner ready or do some errands. And it is a magical little multi-part story by a Vermont school teacher who started it during the pandemic to stay in touch with his students, and it's become sort of a low-key sensation among parents of young children. And I cannot rave about it enough because it has been saving me in recent weeks and trying to manage my four and seven year old. So thank you to the creator of the Magic Woods podcast. Will it have the same effect on teenagers, for example? It's worth a shot, Mo. It's worth a shot. Asking for a friend. Asking for a friend. This is a hypothetical, right, Mo? Purely hypothetical. That is all the time we have for today. Thank you so much to Mo Alethi and Mike Dubke. Left, Right & Center is produced by Leo Duran. Our executive producer is Arnie Seipel. The show is recorded and mixed by Nick Lamponi. Todd M. Simon composed our theme music. Left, Right & Center is a co-production of KCRW and Fearless Media, and we're distributed by PRX. I'm Susan Davis. Thanks for joining us. Tune in next week for more Left, Right & Center. Download and subscribe at kcrw.com slash LRC, the KCRW app, or wherever you find podcasts. Left, Right, and Center is produced and distributed by KCRW. From PRX.